Report
Introduction to Geographic Information Systems at TU Dresden
1 Goal of the analysis
Research question: How does the relationship between population density and temperature vary across different land use types around Netherlands?
2 Data
Administrative boundaries (Hijmans, Guarino, and Pushkar (2023))
Temperature data (Karger et al. (2017))
Population density (Tatem (2017))
2.1 Outcome variable: Temperature
2.2 Summary Statistics
| Land Use Type | Total Pixels | Valid Population Pixels | % Valid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arable land | 802 | 623 | 77.7 |
| Artificial, non-agricultural vegetated areas | 1036 | 978 | 94.4 |
| Forests | 1644 | 1036 | 63.0 |
| Heterogeneous agricultural areas | 888 | 728 | 82.0 |
| Industrial, commercial and transport units | 1109 | 1066 | 96.1 |
| Inland waters | 420 | 193 | 46.0 |
| Inland wetlands | 278 | 134 | 48.2 |
| Marine waters | 5 | 3 | 60.0 |
| Maritime wetlands | 74 | 29 | 39.2 |
| Mine, dump and construction sites | 258 | 226 | 87.6 |
| Open spaces with little or no vegetation | 58 | 28 | 48.3 |
| Pastures | 736 | 545 | 74.0 |
| Permanent crops | 75 | 57 | 76.0 |
| Scrub and/or herbaceous vegetation associations | 603 | 301 | 49.9 |
| Urban fabric | 1555 | 1540 | 99.0 |
| Note: Calculated using population raster with NA values removed. |
Although some land use categories such as Inland waters, Wetlands, and Sparse vegetation have a low proportion of valid population pixels (often below 50%), we chose to retain them in the Table 2 table for the sake of completeness and visual consistency.
However, we acknowledge that the population means and correlation values in these categories may be statistically unreliable due to sparse or uneven data coverage. In particular, categories like Marine waters include only a few valid observations, resulting in potentially misleading or exaggerated correlation coefficients. We document this in the Table 1.
To address this, we highlighted such rows in the Table 2 and excluded their population and correlation values from the Figure 2, to prevent visual misinterpretation while preserving transparency in reporting.
| Land Use Type | Sample Size | Mean Temperature (°C) | SD Temperature (°C) | Mean Population | Median Population | Correlation temperature ~ population |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Forests | 1,644 | 11.16 | 0.29 | 2.57 | 1.49 | 0.08 |
| Urban fabric | 1,555 | 11.21 | 0.27 | 7.68 | 5.91 | 0.11 |
| Industrial, commercial and transport units | 1,109 | 11.22 | 0.24 | 6.50 | 4.65 | 0.02 |
| Artificial, non-agricultural vegetated areas | 1,036 | 11.19 | 0.26 | 7.71 | 4.92 | 0.03 |
| Heterogeneous agricultural areas | 888 | 11.23 | 0.27 | 2.82 | 1.87 | 0.14 |
| Arable land | 802 | 11.23 | 0.26 | 2.88 | 1.81 | 0.10 |
| Pastures | 736 | 11.22 | 0.27 | 3.57 | 2.19 | 0.05 |
| Scrub and/or herbaceous vegetation associations | 603 | 11.15 | 0.31 | 2.16 | 1.15 | 0.11 |
| Inland waters | 420 | 11.17 | 0.28 | 3.72 | 2.09 | 0.18 |
| Inland wetlands | 278 | 11.15 | 0.28 | 2.46 | 1.19 | 0.05 |
| Mine, dump and construction sites | 258 | 11.22 | 0.25 | 5.07 | 2.74 | 0.00 |
| Permanent crops | 75 | 11.31 | 0.14 | 2.21 | 1.63 | -0.13 |
| Maritime wetlands | 74 | 11.37 | 0.26 | 1.12 | 0.57 | 0.30 |
| Open spaces with little or no vegetation | 58 | 11.26 | 0.24 | 2.13 | 0.81 | 0.20 |
| Marine waters | 5 | 11.17 | 0.35 | 2.47 | 2.62 | -0.69 |
| Source: Data from Netherlands 2019: Temperature (CHELSA), Population (WorldPop), Land Use (Corine) |